I’m done with politics (at least for a while).
Like so many others I’m desperately angry at what’s happening in the world, and I have been doing what little I can -and it has been I admit very little -to contribute to the various debates which are raging around the world today.
However it has become plain to me in the last few weeks that I am losing my ability to think as cooly and as rationally as I would like. In some things, I still feel I can trust my judgment, but in other things I do not. Usually when I am asked questions I cannot answer or to which I do not trust my own answers – which happens far more than some might think from the firmness with which I usually express myself – I take the time to do the research and get the answers right.
But that is becoming extremely burdensome now as my general exhaustion – mental and physical – is affecting my depression detrimentally and increasing the tortuous confusion and the unbearable anger that often arises from it.
This may seem somewhat self-indulgent to many; but I am going to enter my 77th year in a couple of weeks, and my health, shaky at best, is not improving. I need a break, I need to rest.
So now I’m going to concentrate on those things such as my music and my reading which are of no importance to any-one but me. Accordingly, I am going to ration my use of the social media and do more enjoyable things with it.
For a start, I have a lot of poetry I want to get out there, beginning with this one:

I DO NOT JUST HOPE

I do not just hope:
I know –
I will not let the past defeat me,
I will learn from it.

I do not just hope:
I know –
I will not let the present confuse me,
I will use it.

I do not just hope:
I know –
I will not let the future frighten me,
I will command it.

I do not just hope:
I know –
I will be who I ought to be.

I wrote this at a time when I trying to deal with my depression in a positive way. In it I set out to make a point, not for other people to think about, but for myself